How might federal agencies evaluate IT centralization with a user-centered approach? Why is this important? How will a user-centered approach bring value to the agency? These questions are at the heart of this 10x phase 2 project.
We’ve synthesized outcomes from past 18F consulting engagements to highlight ways in which human-centered design methods can mitigate risks associated with centralizing IT services. We’ve analyzed real scenarios in which agency partners have attempted centralization, which didn’t always work out as planned. We’ve talked to users who understand how centralization has impacted their teams. We’ve collected many insights about how centralization can play out, and have distilled our learnings into this content series.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on centralization efforts that don't end up delivering value to users. Many guides on centralization focus on IT as an ends not the means to achieve an agency’s mission. This often results in expensive vendor contracts that eventually get tossed out the window a few years later. We believe approaching centralization in a user-centered way reduces risks and improves outcomes for IT leaders, their employees, and the citizens they serve.
Our intended audience is CIOs who set their agency’s modernization strategies as well as performance managers or anyone else who make decisions around IT centralization efforts within an agency. Our goal is to introduce this audience to user-centered exercises, methods, and other best practices to guide them through a centralization initiative.
This multi-part content series covers the following topics:
- Intro: Why prioritizing users is important
- Part 1: Deciding whether or not to centralize
- Part 2: Working with vendors to build a centralized solution
- Part 3: What happens after you centralize?
- Centralization gone right! A case study on the U.S. Web Design System
Digging into user research early will mitigate much bigger risks down the line. Below is a list of exercises we recommend. (Full guide with exercises here)
- Facilitate a consensus-building workshop
- Capture hopes and fears
- Define the current state
- Get a deeper understanding of existing services
- Send an open-ended survey to users
- What are good candidates for consolidation?
- Dig deeper into “good” and “bad” candidates
- Define success metrics
This content is here for all to access, cross-publish, and share. You may also find this content on the 18F Blog, and cross-promoted by partners such as the CIO Council, Performance.gov, Digital.gov, and Centers of Excellence.